I Used a Rotating Comb and Particles to Fake a Zen Garden in Blender

Recreating a zen garden sand rake effect in Blender using NeXus. A rotating comb shape drags through a bed of sand particles, leaving rake trails behind it. The whole thing is built with an emitter, a collider, the SPH granular fluid solver, and a geometry nodes setup that spins the comb automatically. At the end we add rocks, a material, depth of field, and render it out. This one has some trial and error in it figuring out particle radius, substep counts, and comb height took some back and forth, and I left most of that in so you can see how I actually arrived at something that works. What you'll need: Blender, NeXus (free beta), BlenderKit for materials (optional), Polyhaven for HDRI (optional)